Dancing in the moment

Remembering Mom, travel adventures, and more

After migrating south from Washington, D.C., in the mid-1960s, my parents started an annual Great American Road Trip ritual. They’d pile their three kids into the station wagon and drive hundreds of miles.

They believed that these marathon trips from Dallas to Shenandoah, Pa., Boston or the Southwest not only allowed us to visit relatives much cheaper than plane tickets would before airlines were deregulated in the late 1970s, but they brought us closer together and provided a more vivid examination of our country…